You might consider which party controls 2/3's of government. You might also take a look at bills passed by the House and thrown in Harry Reid's trash can without a vote/committee/consideration by the Senate. You might also look the labor participation rate metrics for a real understanding of unemployment statistics.

I think it is pretty obvious that we have a President who is more interested in his standing in the eyes of the pop culture than how effective he and his administration is at governing. He doesn't seem very interested in much about his job and can't seem to get anything done without a one party majority.

But Ellen thinks ObamaCare is great, Kobe thinks he can play for the Laker's and Pelosi thinks he the most bi-partisan President in her memory, as short as it maybe. For all I know, JayZ thinks he can rap.

Most importantly, all the elementary school kids that he lectures think his laser focus on jobs is pretty cool.

Ken, you (and several other vocal people on BPL) are so partisan it's not funny. That's why anything you post (MSN, oh, brother!), should be taken with a grain of salt and a heavy dose of skepticism. You do remember that it was your wonderful Obama administration that needlessly closed all those national parks and monuments (even the ones with no gates) out of pure spite and just because they could, right? It cost more money to add gates and security than just leaving the things open in the first place, not to mention all the veterans who were denied access to their memorials. Remember them? You know, the ones in the wheelchairs? Normandy couldn't stop them and neither did YOUR President and his "BARRYcaids". Oh, yeah…all those wonderful park rangers were "just doing their jobs"….seems to be the standard excuse for tyranny, from Nuremberg to the White House. So, Ken, you can bash on the GOP as being the root of all evil in our country, but you have really lost all credibility in my book because of your blind devotion solely to the Democrat party, when, in reality, most in both parties are the real problem we face.
Oh, and you conveniently side stepped the fact that it was Teddy Roosevelt, a..GASP!…Republican president, who created most of our national parks in the first place. What's next, denying that it was Lincoln (another…GASP! Republican) who freed the slaves and saved the REPUBLIC (yeah, it's a REPUBLIC, not a Democracy)?

Yes I was trolling….I cannot nor will not hide my disdain for The GOP/Teaparty. Michael, you mention Teddy Rosevelt, but I think you might need to go back and re-read some history. That Republican Party is NOT the same as it is today. Nice try

I'm not a Republican congressman, so I could be wrong, but I always saw the Republican idea to remove national parks not as an attack on public land but as part of federalism. Federalism has been a huge part of conservative politics, not so much now with all of the necons.
Part of a growing government is creating monopolies on services and convincing people that only the government can adequately provide that service. This is the same thing with federal vs. state governments. They snatch up all of these things and services that state governments could easily manage themselves. Our country is really too big to have a centralized government that adequately represents the wishes of the people.

I think turning over our national parks to the states would be a fantastic idea.

"Matthew, you really do blame Obama for the government shutdown? Wow. Read much? Please give sane, credible answers instead of a bunch of memes"

If you were paying attention, Ken, I said nothing about who was responsible for the shut down, just who was responsible for closing the memorials and parks and making it as difficult as possible for purely political reasons (to make Republicans look bad). You fell for it, hook, line and sinker, obviously. That was your guy, not one of mine, son.

I don't think Yellowstone National Park would have happened if it was just a local decision. Bunch of East coast meddlers made it happen. If it got defunded federally, it wouldn't be a park any more.

If you think the plan is to defund at national level and then fund at local level, I think you've been conned. It's easy for "you people" to agree on defunding, but you'll never agree on funding from somewhere else. The currently reduced funding for education will get further squeezed. etc.

But I agree maybe the National Park system is big enough. Maybe moving a little land from national forest or BLM to National Park on limited basis.

Half the federal budget is Social Security and Medicare. If the federal budget is too big, maybe we need to reduce that a little. I don't see how it's fair for some young person trying to get by, to support some well off senior driving around in his RV. I'm on the receiving end of this but I still think it's unfair.

In the 16th century "The Prince" by Machiavelli, he says when you conquer a people, you give them something in good times to get them in your favor, so when you need them in tough times, they'll support you. Many of these liberal programs use this principal. We should be wary of this and limit programs, like social security, or else they'll get out of hand.

But the GOP doesn't care about any of this. They just want welfare for corporations. A return to the Charles Dickens model of a few super rich people. Using all of the Machiavelli techniques to subjugate people.

Yes Matthew originally The Democratic Party was on that side of the fence per se' ……however both parties moved in different directions during the Civil Rights Movement which YOU failed to mention. You need to do a better job